Dance like no one's watching

For a very long time, I’ve struggled with the use of the word "invite".  I’ve always understood "invite" to be a verb, e.g. you invite someone to your house for a Christmas party.  However, these days, "invite" is commonly used to replace the word "invitation", e.g. I received a wedding invite from my friend yesterday.

So far, I’ve switched between using "invite" and the correct "invitation" depending on the situation.  At times when I need to use short forms, like when typing an sms, I will use "invite’ in place of "invitation".  However, this exchanging of a verb for a noun really got to me when I watched the show, "The Real Wedding Crashers" today.  Verbs and nouns were thoroughly mixed up in the show.  The 2 examples that really annoyed me were:

1) Did I ash into the car?  (Meaning: Did I throw ash into the car) &

2) The big reveal (Meaning: The big revelation).

What the heck was wrong with these people!  I mean, the above was just sooooo darn wrong.  And to prove why one shouldn’t mix up nouns and verbs… this classic example happened to me at Balaclava just now.

EA was talking animatedly to 3 female colleagues and as he punctured his speech with gestures, he accidentally stuck out his middle finger.  I cut in (a bit too) quickly and said,

"Eh EA!  Why you finger her!"

Immediately, Booze Queen responded saying, "Oh… that sounds damn wrong".

I was about to clarify myself by saying, "Er, I meant why did you show your finger to her".

But I didn’t get a chance lah… ‘cos EA, not catching what I said (think he heard something else), turned to me and said,

"UTG, you’re correct".

Anyway, bottomline is, don’t mix up your verbs and nouns.  It’s just… so wrong.